Evensong series: "Reflections on the resurrection - Known in the breaking of bread."
Readings: Genesis 32:22-31; Luke 24 vv. 13-35
“Then their eyes were opened and they recognised him; and he vanished from their sight.” Luke 24.31
It was GK Chesterton who declared in a particularly xenophobic moment: “There is nothing like travel for narrowing the mind!”
Well although I know what he means, I got back yesterday from travelling round the world for a month, meeting exotic new people and preaching at them. It’s what retired Vicars do.
Needless to say it was enriching in so many ways, with new friendships, new ways of exploring faith, and unforgettable moments:
Celebrating mass in the cool early morning by the pool in a villa in Bali where we met to celebrate a fellow priest’s 50th birthday;
Stealing the blow-up unicorn from the villa next door at 2 in the morning;
The Christian commune on a farm outside of Melbourne Australia;
Sharing in the Annual Spam Festival in Honolulu!
Travelling can be life changing.
So in the Gospel reading, it’s Easter Sunday afternoon.
It’s been a traumatic three days for these two disciples of Christ, Cleopas and perhaps his wife Mary or his son Simeon. We don’t know. (Cf John 19.25)
They are despondent, confused, disappointed and exhausted as they set out on the two-hour walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus, hoping to arrive home before nightfall at about 7.
A stranger joins them on the dangerous road - there’s safety in numbers – nothing too surprising there – except that like Mary in the Garden earlier that day, they don’t recognise Jesus.
And he seems to be the only person in Jerusalem who knows nothing of the events of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the rumours which flew about this morning that some women had found the tomb of Jesus empty with angels telling them he was alive. So Jesus gives them a Bible study for an hour or two. He explains to them what Scripture says about the Messiah – about himself.
But they still don’t get it.
At last they reach Emmaus and Jesus looks as if he’s travelling on beyond the village. Cleopas and Mary are unwilling to see this stranger go off into the dangerous night and press him to stay for supper and sleep on the couch.
And then there’s the famous revelation; the subject of a thousand paintings, of sculptures and stained-glass windows and the wonderful Caravaggio in the National Gallery.
“When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognised him, and he vanished from their sight.” (Luke 24.30f)
They met with the risen Jesus at the end of journey, in the breaking of bread. (Luke 24.35)
The breaking of the word, his explanation of the Scriptures, had not been enough. They had not understood it until his actions took them back to the scene in the upper room on that Thursday three days ago – his Last Supper. It had been the only topic of conversation for them and all the other followers since his death on Friday.
For many people, doctrine and dogma and rationality and Bible verses are not enough. Indeed, they sometimes obscure the presence of Jesus. He is not recognised in them.
It is in the mystery of the Breaking of Bread, the Eucharist, the mass, that he is both recognised and disappears from our sight: the hiddenness of God; the Cloud of Unknowing; the believing and seeing and hoping; yet doubting and wondering where God is, and why he seems so silent.
No wonder Christ said “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed!” (John 20.29)
In many Christian traditions, we know that liturgy and music, art and symbols can take us beyond words to an encounter with the risen Christ, unrecognised and then recognised.
In the mysterious story of Jacob travelling, with his family, staying behind on his own by the brook, wrestling with a stranger, or with the incarnate God, with the eternal Christ – Jacob begins to recognise who this clinging stranger is, and now he’s recognised him he won’t let go – but Christ wounds him with a wound of love, changes his life, Jacob becomes Israel – and doesn’t that resonate down through the centuries and the last 70 years – and then, the stranger disappears.
The Emmaus story is about journeying, and those we meet along the way, and understanding what we have learned when we stop to break bread together. (Companions – com panis – those with whom we break bread.) Pilgrimage has always been a part of Christian formation and a part of the Christian narrative, as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales bear witness.
In 1931, CS Lewis was on a journey with his brother Warnie, travelling pillion on his motorcycle to Whipsnade zoo.
In his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, Lewis related his final step into real joy, for his intellectual conversion two years earlier had been a miserable affair and he described himself as “the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.” It was all words and reason that had brought him to conversion.
This is how he describes that journey that was to change his life and therefore the lives of many others: "I know very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken. I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo, I did."
That journey to Whipsnade Zoo was Lewis's Emmaus Road, his breaking of bread. Of course he would still have many periods of darkness and doubt through the rest of his life.
Early Christians were called the people of The Way.
Christ is not only the destination, he is the Way: he is the journey, and our unknown travelling companion, helping us to piece together all that happens to us as our life unfolds.
And sometimes, when we come to the eucharist, the breaking of bread; or evensong; or fall in love; or hold a new-born child; or go to the zoo on a motorbike; or memorably steal a unicorn…
…then this opening of our eyes helps us to look back on the ups and the downs of our life journey so far, and although we did not recognise the presence of Jesus with us at the time perhaps, we can now reflect more deeply on being surprised by joy, by the eternal presence of the risen Christ; even if, as is the way of life and faith, the moment soon passes.
“Then their eyes were opened and they recognised him; and he vanished from their sight.” Luke 24.31
